Mental Illness in Music Swims Back to Me and The Yellow Wallpaper

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Mental Illness in Music Swims Back to Me and The Yellow Wallpaper
In the past, mental illnesses were not treated as a medical problem, instead, it can be explained as a form of possession ADDIN Mendeley Citation{1c515036-4831-43af-b635-00388444b091} CSL_CITATION { "citationItems" : [ { "id" : "ITEM-1", "itemData" : { "URL" : "http://plato.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/encyclopedia/archinfo.cgi?entry=mental-illness", "accessed" : { "date-parts" : [ [ "2011", "10", "20" ] ] }, "author" : [ { "family" : "Perring", "given" : "Christian" } ], "container-title" : "The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy", "id" : "ITEM-1", "title" : "Mental Illness", "type" : "webpage" }, "uris" : [ "/documents/?uuid=1c515036-4831-43af-b635-00388444b091" ] } ], "mendeley" : { "previouslyFormattedCitation" : "(Perring)" }, "properties" : { "noteIndex" : 0 }, "schema" : "https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/raw/master/csl-citation.json" } (Perring). At times, individuals suffering from this condition are kept locked in cells, if not tied down with chains to prevent them from hurting other people. There may also be instances (typically in poor families) when mental patients are deprived of adequate food and other basic needs. This paper uses two works of literature to describe how individuals suffering from mental illnesses were treated in the past. It is my belief that people in the past had very little knowledge about mental illnesses and many of the treatments used to cure this "disease" were not only ineffective, they also worsened the patient`s situation. Moreover, I believe that mental illness was not simply a psychological issue, but rather, it may be affected by the social and political repression happening in the past.
Written by Anne Sexton, Music Swims Back to Me is a stunning description of the author`s own experience. Suffering from a severe mental illness, Sexton used poetry as part of her therapy and received acclaim for her work. Now considered as one of the best American poets, Sexton is a Pulitzer Prize winner, and a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
Like most of Sexton`s poetry, Music Swims Back to Me is written in a confessional style. It is offers a hounding account of life in a mental institution and provides an insight to the thoughts of a mentally disturbed individual. Its first stanza describes a confused person ADDIN Mendeley Citation{1cabd955-e7e3-4d7e-8249-1c996fa3813c} CSL_CITATION { "citationItems" : [ { "id" : "ITEM-1", "itemData" : { "URL" : "/~ari/as2.html", "accessed" : { "date-parts" : [ [ "2011", "10", "20" ] ] }, "author" : [ { "family" : "Sexton", "given" : "Anne" } ], "container-title" : "Internet Channel", "id" : "ITEM-1", "title" : "Music Swims Back to Me", "type" : "webpage" }, "uris" : [ "/documents/?uuid=1cabd955-e7e3-4d7e-8249-1c996fa3813c" ] } ], "mendeley" : { "previouslyFormattedCitation" : "(Sexton)" }, "properties" : { "noteIndex"...